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Unpublished: The Internet eraser

By Jonathan Bailey

Published on July 14, 2008



Unfortunately you don’t have to look very hard to find examples of Boing Boing suppressing opinions.  I could cite numerous examples but you should be able to easily go there and find some recently “disemvoweled” posts—comments that have had all of their vowels taken out, rendering them largely illegible.  More often than not, these posts can be reconstructed to reveal an editorial opinion which Boing Boing apparently did not agree with.

Violet Blue was simply the most visible episode of this sort of thing.  I don’t think it’s the last time you’ll see BB run afoul of controversial deletions of content—it’s a daily event and once in a while they will inevitably do it to someone that’s famous enough to raise a stink about it.

The fact that they have invented a brand new word for deleting content, “depublishing”, hints at the depth of the problem.  As there is no practical difference between deleting and “depublishing”, why invent a new word for it?  They knew it was controversial, but thought a new label for an old misdeed might soften the blow.

By Anon on 2008 09 01

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